Оглавление
Marco Santoro. Mafia Politics
Table of Contents
List of Tables
List of Illustrations
Guide
Pages
Dedication
MAFIA POLITICS
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Quote
Preface
Notes
1 Mafia, Politics and Social Theory: An Introduction
The Argument
The words ‘mafia’ and ‘mafiosi’
The Setting (The Case Study)
Where Is the ‘Politics’ in Mafia Politics?
Contesting Eurocentric Social Theory
A Final Note on Sources and Method
Notes
2 The ‘Mafia’ in ‘Mafia Studies’: (Re)constructing a Sociological Object
An Archaeology of ‘Mafia Studies’, 1860–1900
Towards a Comparative Approach: Hobsbawm’s Pioneering Contribution and the Neglect of American Research on Organized Crime
The Modern Wisdom (or Mafia Studies since 1970)
Global Mafia (or a Globalization of Mafia Studies)
Notes
3 What is Right with the Economic Theory of the Mafia?
The Rationalist School and Its Foils
The Economic Theory of the Mafia
From the Economic Theory of the Mafia to Protection Theory
Some Problems with the Theory
Towards a Political Theory of the Mafia
Notes
4 The Public Life of Mafiosi
The Publicness of the Mafia
The Public Lives of Mafiosi
Protection as a Field (A First Instalment)
The Public Secrecy of the Mafia
Notes
5 The Mafioso’s Gift, or: Making Sense of an ‘Offer You Cannot Refuse’
Of Gifts and Commodities (and Goods as Well)
The Gift and the Mafia
The Gift of the Godfather: Giving Evidence to the Argument
‘An offer you cannot refuse’
‘I am someone who has always cried over the pain of others’
Of hospitality and conviviality
Politics of the Mafia Gift
Notes
6 Blood, Bund and (Personal) Bonds: The Mafia as an Institutional Type
Of Brotherhoods and Institutions. The mafia and the ‘fraternization contract’
The organization model
From brotherhood to Bund
Rituals of blood
Culture, Writing and Communication
Mafia as mode of personal communication
Hermeneutics of mafia communication
From writing to structure
Violence, Communication and Pathos
Notes
7 Mafias as an Elementary Form of Politics
Refining the Model: The Political Nature of Mafia Obligation
Testing the Model: Questions of Method
Testing the Model: Six Tracks for Future Research
Was there already ‘mafia’ in ancient Mediterranean civilizations?
Secret societies, triads, and the mafia in China
Sicily as the future of Russia, again
Yakuza, the Japanese mafia
Is India the future of Sicily?
Looking for the mafia in the US Congress
From Mana to Mafia: On the Very Idea of ‘Elementary Forms of Political Life’
Notes
Appendix ‘Mafia Studies’ as a ‘Field’
Notes
References
Name Index
Subject Index
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Отрывок из книги
A Riccardo
Matza 1969, 143
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This work builds on all these previous scholarly contributions which have shed light on the political side of the mafia. None of these scholars, however, has systematically tried to develop a comprehensive analysis of the mafia as a political institution or form, modelling it as such and analytically contrasting it to other models seemingly more convincing and acceptable, such as those typically developed in the fields of criminology and economics, or even economic sociology – which in fact are still the dominant perspectives in the literature (e.g., Cressey 1969; Arlacchi 1983a; Reuter 1983; Schneider and Schneider 1976; Catanzaro 1992 [1988]; Gambetta 1993, 2009; Sciarrone 2009 [1998]; Paoli 2003; Varese 2001, 2010). This is what this book aims to do, furthering the knowledge we have of the political dimension of the mafia, while embedding it in a critical theory of the political conditions of knowledge production in the social sciences. This makes the book a useful critical review of current scholarship, too. It is not a textbook, but rather a comprehensive critical guide to the available literature that advances a fresh interpretation of old and new evidence (for a first step in this direction, see Santoro 2007, 2011).
In this endeavour, political anthropology can offer powerful tools – such as Elman Service’s (1962) bands/tribes/chiefdoms/states taxonomy and its developments, or Abner Cohen’s (1981) dramaturgical model of elite politics in Africa (see also Carneiro 1981; Claessen and Skalnik 1979, 1981; Runciman 1982) – and some use will be made of them. The category of the chiefdom looks especially enlightening for classifying and making sense of mafia political structures. Equally promising for a re-reading of the available evidence is the analysis of political strategies developed by Frederick Bailey (2001 [1969]) after he watched the famous televised US congressional hearings of Joe Valachi on the criminal organization of Cosa Nostra. This analysis shows how a large part of the strategies elaborated and employed by mafiosi – which exhibit surprising similarities to those used by the Swat Pathans in Pakistan (Barth 1969) – already make sense in the context of political competition and leadership selection, and that a purely economic reading (as economic strategies of businessmen) does not add much to their understanding. But to capture mafia political architecture as it exists and works in institutional environments that also include the state, we need models permitting us to relativize, historicize and criticize the state’s claims as well as its imagery. Anthropological models are, unfortunately, too naive with respect to the history of political institutions and accept an idea of the state that is too general and transhistorical for our interests (see Spruyt 1994, 195n2). We need more specific, and historically determinate, conceptual instruments. This is what Tilly’s (1985) reading of early war-making states as organized crime, or Scott’s (1998) deconstruction of the liberal state’s imagination and cognitive claims, can offer us. Carl Schmitt’s (1966 [1932]) theory of the political – and work on political conflict and political friendship grounded on it (e.g., Kelly 2003; Mouffe 2005; Slomp 2007) – could also offer important ideas and suggestions even for an empirically based social theory like that pursued in this book. Through these studies, it is possible to put in brackets the modern, territorial, sovereign, rational, European state’s claims of objectivity, universality and equity, and look at the political game as it is practised in real life, even from within the historically specific form of the Western state, and against its supposed universality, equity and rationality.
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